Effective Strategies for Team Engagement-Step 3: Consistency

Work with Kimberly 1:1 to build stronger teams and lead with confidence.

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In this episode, "Part 3: Consistency," host Kimberly Benoit dives into the often-overlooked pillar of genuine engagement: consistency. Through relatable stories and hard-earned leadership lessons, Kimberly explores why consistency is more than just sticking to the rules—it’s about building real trust, showing up for your team, and creating an environment where people feel valued and secure.

She breaks down the three critical types of consistency every leader needs: behavioral (walking your talk), emotional (being a steady presence), and follow-through consistency (keeping your promises). Kimberly doesn’t shy away from the tough stuff, sharing how overcommitment, perfectionism, poor time management, and burnout can undermine even the best intentions—and offers actionable advice for getting back on track when you slip up.

The episode wraps up the series on the three pillars of engagement, leaving you with a big question: what is the real, lived experience of being led by you? Engagement, after all, isn’t theoretical—it’s daily, practical, and one genuine interaction at a time.

Whether you’re leading a team or aspiring to, this episode is packed with real talk, honest stories, and practical tools to elevate your impact. Listen in to learn why authentic, consistent leadership is the true foundation of a truly engaged team.

#Leadership #Consistency #EmployeeEngagement #TeamTrust #AuthenticLeadership #WorkplaceCulture #PersonalGrowth #LeadershipDevelopment #WADIpodcast #PodcastCommunity

To learn more about Kimberly J Benoit or how you can work with her, check out her website, kimberlyjbenoit.com, or find her on LinkedIn.

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Special thanks to Esplanade Studios for mastering support & Melissa Argyle Designs. Music by Denys Kyshchuk from Pixabay

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Transcript

Kimberly Benoit: 0:31

Welcome to, we've all done it, the podcast for leaders who get the work done, but find the people part of leading frustrating. I'm Kimberly Benoit, author, award-winning former corporate executive and leadership coach with over 20 years in the corporate world. I've seen it all. The good, the bad, and the downright messy. If you've ever avoided a tough conversation, played favorites without realizing it, or just wondered why is leading people so hard, you're in the right place because we've all done it. This is your space for real talk, real solutions and no judgment. Together, I'll share practical strategies to help you navigate workplace drama, build stronger teams. And lead with confidence. No more pretending, no more suffering in silence. Just honest, actionable leadership from someone who's been in your shoes. Are you ready to lead differently? Let's do this. Hey everybody. Today we're gonna explore the third and perhaps the most underrated pillar of genuine engagement consistency. Hmm. So let's start with a story.'cause I think this is really important. I. So I had a young leader that I was mentoring and they reached out to me because they had a leader problem. They had a leader that they had just been assigned to. There had been a reorg and this new leader did not believe in one-on-ones and scheduled one-on-ones. Hi. His philosophy was, when you need him, you just find them and you could text him. You could just drop by his office or, find time on his calendar and. She said that although that sounded great in theory, she could never get him. And she was in the current, she was in a current situation where she had an an employee issue. It was pretty significant team member issue. Uh, HR was not getting back to her in a timely manner. Her, she had reached out to her leader via text, via email, and she's like, Hey, I just need to talk through with you, like I have to talk to somebody about this. This is beyond. My leader level to figure out how to navigate this legally and, you know, ethically, and basically the earliest time he could make for her was over a month out. And so when she reached out to me, it wasn't to ask about the team member problem, which I found fascinating, but she was reaching out to me to figure out how to better get her leader to meet with her in a more timely fashion. She's like, how can I call him out on the fact that this is not acceptable? I need him. He is not there. And quite frankly, I don't wanna work for him anymore. I don't think he actually cares about me. I don't think he actually cares about my team. Whew. Powerful words, right? So that's why we're, today, we're gonna spend some time talking about consistency, because in this example, this new leader that she had, you know, thinks that he's being flexible and nimble and can meet the team where they are. But the reality is, is what they're experiencing is feeling left behind, unseen, unheard, quite frankly, unimportant. So what is actually taking place is the opposite of what he intended. So that's why today we are really gonna dig into three different distinct kinds of consistency that are crucial when we talk about engagement. So for, we're going over'em, it's behavioral consistency. Emotional consistency and follow through consistency. So let's dig into the first one. Behavioral consistency. This means it is when your actions align with your stated values and expectations. Plain and simple. Are you walking your talk? That simple. If you say your team is important, how are you showing that in your actions? Do you have regulars touch points so that your team knows that when you say they're important, you're there for them? Are you showing up when you have scheduled meetings? Are you not skipping or cutting every single meeting short? That was always a favorite of mine is I had a leader. We had time on the calendar for 30 minutes, but never failed. He was always 10 minutes late and had to leave at minimum five minutes early. So I never actually had 30 minutes. I had at best 15, and I had to make sure I crammed in as much stuff as possible in 15 minutes, but at least I knew I had 15 minutes. Right. That's something. But again, it comes back to, I'm not talking about rigidity or inflexibility. Unlike this other, this other leader that I was referring, you know, schedule changes happen, things move and we do have to flex. But what I would ask you to consider is how are you making time to show up and hear what your team needs to tell you, not just when you need to communicate to them. Because the reality is they need your time. They need your attention, and you have to make space because ultimately an engaged leader is the foundation for an engaged team. They have to feel you are as engaged in them as you're asking them to be engaged in their job. Hmm. Alright. That was a big one for the first one. So let's get into emotional consistency. Oh, this is, this hits all of us, I promise. So when I talk about emotional cons, consistency, I'm not saying like we have to suppress how we feel or the converse of that. Like, come out and pretend we're happy all the time, or overshare. What this talks about is trying to be as relatively stable emotionally as possible so that people can count on you to be there. And, and this matters a great deal because statistics tell us that teams with emotionally unpredictable leaders spend up to 20% of their mental resources trying to manage and anticipate their leaders' moods rather than actually doing their job. So if you are in a place, and I will own it, like I have been in places of burnout where I showed up and was the raging lunatic of the day, and I wasn't maybe the best at managing emotional shifts like we are human. We are human, but we have to also be mindful that once in a while is a thing. But if this is what's happening day in and day out, we are damaging our teams. We, we are creating the, the major cracks in the foundation of our teams feeling like they know what to expect when they show up at work today. Again, I, I fully understand that we are in environments where we are being asked to do more with less. And that stress is a at, is at an all time high. Burnout is really high. This is the ultimate moment when I say, as a leader, you have to take care of yourself and fill your cup so that you can show up and take care of others. You have to make space and boundaries for yourself because that translates into what your team does, how your team performs, and how your team shows up. Plain and simple. Alright. Lastly, the third dimension, which is follow through consistency. This is doing what you say you'll do when you say you'll do it. One of the companies I used to for work for called this the say do ratio. How often do you do what you commit to? And so this is really important because this is a huge predictor in trust in your leader. And it just, again, put yourself in your, like your own employee shoes. Does your leader follow through with the stuff he says he or she says she's gonna do? If they do, you have a lot of trust and you are probably gonna feel better about that relationship then if your boss drops the ball almost every time and says, Hey, I'm gonna do this for you, and then never gets done. So if you think this isn't true, if you think it doesn't apply, flip this situation and put yourself in the employee shoe with your leader and see how that feels. All right. So one of the things I wanna talk about is how do we kill ourselves with consistency? So where do we undermine our own efforts as leaders? Because, ugh, I hate to break it to you. I've committed every one of these two. So when we think about areas where. We need to pay attention. This is what I'm talking about. So there's four areas that are super big culprits in us being really consistent with how we show up with our teams. One is that we overcommit, we overcommit, we simply say yes to too many things, which means we're gonna break promises. A common one that I've experienced throughout my career was people who had like, were triple, quadruple, booked on their calendar. And they were like, well, I'll just do my best to make some of each meeting. So let's remember. Let's go back to the beginning of if we try to multitask, nothing is really getting our attention. Same thing. You know, we, and this is really hard, so I'm gonna be very clear. When we are type A and we are people pleasers, and I'm talking, you know, if you're hearing me out there, you want to do things to help other people. When you genuinely wanna help other people, you want to say yes, this is incredibly important. We have to also know when to say no because we can't possibly do it all. Now. Secondly, if you're saying yes to a lot of things, what are the systems and rhythms that you are using to ensure that you're tracking what you're supposed to do? So consistency requires rhythms. It, and I'm not talking like robust tracking and all that kind of stuff, but what I am saying is. You will drop a lot of balls if you do not have a way to track what you're committing to, what is needed of you. What your rhythms, like. Who is managing your calendar? You know, are you doing it? Are you doing a good job of it? Are there ways that you could do it better? Can you block time differently? Do you have an admin who can help you say no? I knew leaders all the time who, they weren't the bad guys. It was their admins who were the ones who were the heavies. I once rem I remember a conversation with a C-suite admin and I asked her, you know, what was the one thing people. Most missed about her role, and she said, I wake up every day knowing I'm gonna disappoint people because I'm gonna tell them no because I'm protecting their time. And so how can you employ some of that mentality of you can't be everything to everyone. You're gonna gonna have to decide your priorities. So third, the third culprit that gets us in trouble is perfectionism. And I have no problems telling y'all I have fallen in this, particularly earlier in my career. I struggled with this a great deal. And why this becomes a challenge for consistency is you will delay delivery of something like a conversation, a product, because you are pursuing some standard of trying to make sure you have it all right in your head. It's never gonna be perfect. No conversation is ever gonna be perfect. And so the cl quicker we can become comfortable with the idea of a b plus mentality. The better that that becomes, because we're willing to take action even if we're not a hundred percent certain. And then the last one that typically gets us in trouble, and I've talked about this just a few seconds ago, is stress depletion consistency. And engagement requires a lot of energy. Think about going to the gym and trying to get healthy. It requires you being consistent with a diet. It requires you consistently getting exercise, like you can have a cheat day here and there, but it's the consistency of that work is what gets you a healthy, healthy body. Correct? Well, the same applies with engagement, so. You have to take care of yourself when you are depleted. Consistency is the first thing to go. Think about how many meetings when you're burnt out, you're tired, like you're toast. How many meetings have you canceled even though you knew it might be important to somebody because you just needed, you weren't there, or you were overextended, or whatever it is, you have to take care of yourself. And again, this does come back to creating some boundaries and really knowing what your priorities are. And so before you, I mean, I feel like there's probably some judgment out there where you're saying, where you're like, Kim, you're asking for everything. First and foremost, let me be very clear. I'm not asking for everything, but I am asking that we recognize that in order to have that engagement that we so desperately want, that it requires a lot and that we are human and that we will not, we'll never get this all right, all the time. So what do you do when you're not consistent? What do you do if you aren't showing up the way you wanna show up? You've had a bad day, you've had a bad week. Well, guess what? I've been there, I've done it. And the thing that always worked for me, which I'm going to tell you, and it's because it's a hundred percent genuine, is when I know I have been the lunatic in the office. I know I came in hot that I had, I was angry about something else, some, someone else. And I came into my team dynamic and I brought the anger and rage I had about something else that I couldn't express there. Came out in my team. The first thing I would do is, you know, one, get myself out of it. But the next day when I finally had clear thinking, I would do one thing. I would pull my team in a huddle and I would first acknowledge that I was a problem. Say it. I was the problem. Yesterday, I came in here, I. I was not the leader I wanted to be for y'all. I know I created a really negative environment yesterday. I, whatever it is, you did acknowledge it. One, two, then genuinely say you're sorry. Say you're sorry if you upset anyone. You disrespected anyone. If you made anyone feel badly for trying to ask you a question, whatever it is, apologize, genuinely, and then commit to saying, Hey, this is not who I wanna be. I'm trying to be better. And I genuinely appreciate if you guys, you know. I, I need your help to be better, and I promise I will do better. So you, but, but it has to be with going back to that authenticity, you have to mean it, it has to be genuine.'Cause again, we are human. We're gonna make mistakes. We're never gonna get this All right, every day, all day. Okay? So as we conclude our series, I wanna pull it all together. So the three pillars, right? So present and authenticity is about creating the connection that makes engagement possible. Second, clear communication makes understanding. Second, clear communication provides the understanding that makes engagement meaningful. And lastly, consistency builds the trust that makes engagement sustainable. For those days that we don't get it. Right. Right. So each pillar reinforces the other. Without all three engagement initiatives, we'll always fall short. So as I leave you today in this final episode, I want to, I want you to consider a very big question. As we have gone through these last four weeks together, what is the actual experience of being led by you? Not what you intend, what you hope it to be, not what you know your leadership philosophy states or the posters on your wall, but the actual lived daily reality of working on your team. Engagement isn't theoretical, it's experiential, and it's created one interaction at a time through presence, clear communication and consistency. So, hey everybody, this is Kimberly Bewa again, just reminding you that great leadership is not about the grand gestures. It's about showing up day after day in ways that make people feel valued, informed, and secure. Take care, everyone. I. i've got two things before I let you go. One. If you've ever gotten any value from the show, please leave a five star review. It really helps and absolutely makes my day. The second thing is, if you have any thoughts you'd like to share with me, please shoot me an email at podcast@kimberlyjbenoit.com. I'd love to hear from you. All right, see you in the next episode.